Deathstroke’s Son Has the One Power Thanos Genuinely Fears

Very few characters in the Marvel Universe can intimidate Thanos, but over in the DC Universe Deathstroke’s son Jericho has a power that may frighten the Mad Titan. Ironically, this power wouldn’t be threatening to Thanos because it is able to kill him. On the contrary, what makes Jericho’s ability so scary to the Mad Titan is that it would be able to do the opposite.

Jericho is a character who was created by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez during their iconic Teen Titans run in the 1980s. Despite being the son of the villain Deathstroke, Jericho joined the Teen Titans and became a hero. Although he has been corrupted by evil forces multiple times throughout his history in the comics, Jericho has generally always returned to fight for the good side as a superhero. His superpowers enable him to possess people he makes eye contact with. This possession enables him to control their physical bodies and sometimes view their memories. However, this all changes after he receives a power upgrade from the Legion of Doom.

In Deathstroke #46, written by Christopher Priest and with art by Fernando Pasarin, Cam Smith, and Jeremy Cox, a superpowered Lex Luthor approaches Jericho, offering a major upgrade to his powers in the form of a “gravity pocket.” While he is initially hesitant, Jericho ultimately accepts Luthor’s offer. This gravity pocket supercharges Jericho’s meta-abilities, increasing the strength of his possession as well as granting him the power of flight and turning him blue. His supercharged abilities improve on his possession powers in a variety of ways. Originally Jericho could only possess one person at a time, but now he is able to possess whole armies. In addition, he has much larger control over what he can order those under his possession to do, even being able to instantly kill them or reverse the process and bring them back to life. This last power is easily the mightiest of all his new abilities and also the one that Thanos would likely be most afraid of.

The ability to bring the dead back to life directly counters Thanos’s main goal. As a nihilist obsessed with Death, Thanos desires nothing more than to annihilate all life in the universe. He even longs for his own death, a fact that has been used against him by the Guardians of the Galaxy. Thus, someone who can bring him back from the dead against his wishes would be terrifying for him, as it means that he would never be able to accomplish his ultimate goals.

Luckily for Thanos, Jericho eventually loses the upgrades to his powers and is thus unable to bring the dead back to life anymore. In addition, even if he were able to regain his supercharged powers, they are still in two completely different universes, so they wouldn’t be able to interact with each other outside of a crossover event. However, if Thanos and Jericho’s upgraded form ever do interact, the powers of Deathstroke‘s son would surely shake the Mad Titan to his core.